Mistrust: A Sacred Duty of the Free Citizen

The question (or line of questioning—but there’s really just one question here) is sometimes put to me, “Why are you so cynical? Why do you not trust people in power to do the right thing? You’re a good person… do you think yourself the only one of his kind? If you vote for good people, will they not do right by the voters as you and I would do? How can we have a democratic government without trust?”

We do not, in fact, have or want a democracy. We have a democratic republic—which means that we elect reliable people periodically to do our will rather than respond to every question of governance with thumbs-up or thumbs-down in a great soccer stadium. People in stadiums often behave with suicidal folly—even sensible people.

This response contains the kernel of an answer to every other question (all of them, as I said, being truly the same question). People are weak and highly corruptible. Their voting behavior has never been so easy to manipulate—or not, at least, since the days when a whole community could actually be crammed into an amphitheater—as now, when images and sounds groomed and vetted multiple times can be broadcast to them during every waking hour, and almost during their sleep. Just because a “leader” is selected from among them does not mean that this figure is mystically cleansed of his or her human fallibility upon vaulting to Olympus. On the contrary, the chosen one is submitted to temptations far in excess of anything known to the common man. The intoxicating thrill of instant power, flattery, celebrity, wealth (for the job brings all the trappings of a royal setting, even if its perks do not immediately make their way into a personal bank account)… these are enough to convince any ordinary man that he has become a god—or that he is GOD.

We should always mistrust our elected representatives, for the same reason that we should always mistrust ourselves. We are not God—none of us. Not even close. Yet we enjoy a truly formidable capacity to rationalize self-serving behavior into its opposite. I have often heard government officials make this argument, or its equivalent: “Of course I cheated on my taxes! Everyone else does, too! Why should I impoverish myself? I need wealth to be re-elected—and I need to be re-elected so that I can do good work for the masses. They need me to be re-elected!” Pitiful… the meltdown of a human soul into the pitch of sophistical self-deception is always a deeply distressing sight.

In a republic, to be sure, we cannot trust no one; but we can and must aspire to trust as few as possible as little as possible for as brief a time as possible. Term limits would be highly desirable, in abstract. If government is so complicated that a freshman rep will require another two terms just to begin to understand which corridors lead where, then the rats’ nest where he transacts business needs to be plowed under and replaced by the simplest of designs. In practice, attempts to limit one person’s influence prove easy to circumvent. Vladimir Putin remains the de facto ruler of Russia, the Left insists that Bush Junior constantly did the bidding of Bush Senior (who both did the bidding of Dick Cheney), and we very nearly elected Bill Clinton’s surrogate to the Whitehouse in the last election. Such subterfuge can lull a healthy mistrust to sleep.

Of imperative importance right now, therefore, is not to press home some sort of rules change which promises to do our work of vigilance for us: the important thing is that we be vigilant. We should particularly not trust people whose behavior throws up such warning signs as these: they force public schooling upon the poor yet send their own children to elite private academies, they railroad a program of public health care through the legislature yet secure special alternatives for themselves, they take over private companies and forcibly cut executive salaries yet vote themselves pay raises and regale themselves with endless lavish junkets to Europe and the Caribbean, they seize control of cherished freedoms to save the natural environment yet create and massive and incessant stream of fuming traffic from Mexico to the U. S., they seek to monitor the air waves dictatorially because talk radio is misleading millions yet decline to prosecute thugs with bludgeons who stake out poling stations… and so on, and so on.

These men and women are whited sepulchers, bright and clean on the outside but carrying the stench of death within. They are hypocrites of the highest magnitude. Many of them deserve to be convicted of treason: some may deserve execution for deliberately plotting to set themselves up as kings over a once free, now subverted people. The level of threat implied in this population of professional shysters and Judases will NOT be assessed by history if the dog has his day—because the dog will write whatever miserable scraps of history are written, and who will read them in a nation of slaves? The threat, rather, must be assessed now, on the spot, and responded to without delay.

Vote these weakling specimens, many of whom have degenerated into profligate evil-doers, out of office. For God’s sake, don’t TRUST them. If some here and there appear to have honored the limited trust necessarily placed in them for a while, then extend that trust for another while. Do not, however, fall in love with a name or a habit of voting. Do not be stupid enough to believe that a repeat-offender lionized for his staying power deserves any more veneration than a Mob boss who has killed off all the competition.